23 Feels (23 Flavours and Then Some)
by TrylonAndPerisphere
Summary: Okay, here's my entry for the "23 emotions people feel, but can't explain" challenge. What can I say? I'm totally mired in the save Delphine/cophine feels of late.


Cosima's hands were so gentle, tender in their ministrations as they slipped through Delphine's wet hair, finger-combing any knots and tangles out slowly. Delphine felt herself take in a deep breath and let it out in a long, soft sigh, her wound flaring with pain for a second as she did. The pain was still there, but it was fading. It wouldn't be long before she could get her abdomen wet and these quiet, careful sessions of Cosima washing her hair as her head tilted back into the sink, or sponge-bathing her healing body one small section at a time, would be over, replaced by her standing in the shower alone, able to independently care for herself again. She both looked forward to and dreaded it — feeling strong, herself again, not a burden to her amour or the others, no matter how many times they told her they were glad to do it after her many sacrifices, yet also missing these intimate moments where she felt she could lay her burdens down and just bask in Cosima's love for her.

Cosima's love. She almost lost it forever, first by keeping secrets and then by spilling her blood on a cold, concrete floor. She didn't expect to be alive, much less be here, in this safe house, coaxed through her convalescence by so many people she had feared would just as soon wish she'd disappear. She raised her head with Cosima's guidance once the clone had finished squeezing the excess moisture out, and then felt the familiar tug of the towel against her scalp as Cosima patted and massaged her head.

"What're you smiling at," came at her in Cosima's low, slightly teasing tone, and she could tell just from her voice that her sweet scientist was smiling, as well.

"Mmm. You've gotten so good at that. I love your touch," Delphine murmured, briefly catching her caretaker's hand and kissing it. "I swear my hair looks and feels better now than it ever did when I did it myself."

"Well, thank Krystal for that," Cosima noted. "If it weren't for her I'd still be using a brush and that conditioner that made you look like a transient." They both giggled and Cosima finished patting her dry, then gently took her elbow. "C'mon, Doctor Cormier, back to bed."

Rising was still difficult, but at least her gait had progressed from lurching and buckling to shuffling, then distinctly separate, if ginger, steps. She had already teased Cosima that soon she should be able to practice striding in her four-and-a-half-inch heels, again, to which the brunette mock-scolded her, "it's sexy until you tip over."

Settled in the bed again, she took a sip of juice through the straw Cosima offered her, then caught the nurturing woman's hand again and kissed it some more. Cosima smiled, put down the cup, and then leaned over to rummage in the nightstand.

"What are we doing now," Delphine asked, intertwining their fingers, and Cosima straightened back up with a thick folder and an iPad.

" _I_ am going to go through these reports on transgenic organ growth," she answered, and placed the tablet on Delphine's lap, "while _you_ are going to chill out and entertain yourself. And I swear to God, if I find you looking at anything more taxing than footage of baby animals..." She finished the sentence with a pointed look, which prompted Delphine to sigh again.

"But I could be helping you. Cosima, we know at some point you'll most likely need a transplant—"

"I _know,_ believe me, I know," the smaller woman cut her off, "but right now, I'm doing fine and you're not, so, take a chill pill, Cormier… unless you want me to give you a literal chill pill to knock you out."

Delphine poked at the tablet, a vertical line appearing between her brows and her lips forming a frustrated pout. Cosima chuckled.

"You're so cute," she told the Frenchwoman, reaching over to lightly poke her protruding lower lip. "You can pout all you want to. Pouty Delphine is, like, a million times better than cold, determined, distancing Delphine, anytime." Delphine met this with an eyeroll, which Cosima mocked with a smirk before turning her attention to the papers.

They were silent for a while, save the occasional shuffling of papers by Cosima, and a moment when an unexpected ad popped up on the iPad and Delphine had to quickly mute the sound. The sun was pushing light through the semi-diaphanous curtains at an almost horizontal angle, then, casting a golden glow on both of them as they read. Every once in a while, Delphine would glance up and admire how it lit the contours of Cosima's face, or Cosima would peek to see Delphine's profile, backlit and beautiful and oh so alive, as she gazed neutrally at the screen or, now and then, caught her lower lip in her teeth as she concentrated. Finally, Delphine cleared her throat.

"Hm. This is interesting," she ventured, raising her her eyebrows and turning slightly towards the studious woman beside her. Cosima took a second to pull her attention slightly from an important section and look up at Delphine from under her brows.

"Mmwhat," she asked, somewhat absently, suspecting that her beloved was less interested in online content than in catching her attention.

"'Twenty-three emotions people feel, but can't explain,'" the blonde in the bed read aloud. "'Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.'" Cosima let out a small snort.

"Yeah, I used to get that," she commented, "until I found out I'm a clone and everything. I highly doubt there are a lot of other people out there who are science experiments on the lam from a handful of nefarious cults and organizations. Working nine to five rarely gets that convoluted. Although," she cocked her head and thought a moment, "I guess if you count all the people involved in all this shit it does start to add up. And who's to say other people don't have equally weird things going on that we never know about?"

"Exactly," Delphine nodded. "You never know what's happening under the surface. It could be that any person you see on the street has led an exciting life, or that, at least, their thoughts and perceptions are so vivid that their internal life is just as fascinating as a person who has explored distant lands, or has been married seven times."

"Wow," Cosima exclaimed. "Look at you. Are you sure you're not spending your down time trying to get another doctorate? Maybe in philosophy or psychology?"

"Brat," Delphine mumbled, reaching to poke the the shoulder of the woman needling her. "I just thought it was interesting." Cosima observed the petulant jut of the blonde's lower lip shift back into pout mode.

"No, no," she encouraged, leaning forward, tone reassuring. "It is. Read me another one." Delphine glanced at her suspiciously, then acquiesced.

"Mm… 'Opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.'" She looked back at her companion, who straightened up in her seat to look back directly into her eyes. They both stared for a moment, soaking in each other's gaze.

"Yeah," Cosima said softly, after several beats of silence. "Although, it's not always invasive, really. I mean it can be, if you're, like, _peering_ at them with questions, or don't really know the person. Sometimes it's just a connection, you know? A nice connection."

"Oui," Delphine answered, a small smile playing about her lips. Cosima's hand was back on the bed, so she took it and kissed it again, watching the bloom of her lover's grin spread slowly, full of delight at the contact, the bond reaffirmed between them.

"Okay," she smiled, after a moment, turning back to the tablet. "How about, emm... 'Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.'"

"That's… oddly specific," the brunette opined, scrunching her brow. "Here, let me see that." She climbed up to sit next to the Frenchwoman on the bed and look at the screen. "'Énouement,'" she read, "'the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.' Yikes, that's kind of depressing."

"Hm," Delphine responded, with a small tilt of her head. "It makes me think of when I thought I was dying, you know? I was so sure my life was over, resigned, thinking I'd never know happiness again, and then I woke up, and there you were." Cosima turned to look at her seriously, her face slightly tensed with emotional pain. "I wish I could go back and sit next to myself on the garage floor, and say 'don't give up, everything is all right. They will find you and you will recover, and it will bring you closer to one another, again."

Cosima's expression relaxed, and she leaned down, drawn to her lover's lips. They kissed softly, just touching, the gesture expressing such depth of feeling, so many words.

"Yeah, and I wish I could go back and tell myself to trust you, to not feel so rejected and act like an asshat," Cosima related, kissing her again when the blonde took her jaw in hand reassuringly. She let the touch soothe her and eased back. "Is that a French word? It sounds like one."

"Mm, not that I've ever heard of." Delphine slightly shook her head, looking thoughtful.

"Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong. Ay-nyoo-MONT. EH-noo-MAWN."

Delphine giggled, glancing at the screen.

"I can read it right there," she pointed out, "and I don't recognize it."

"Huhn," Cosima huffed, eyes roaming down the list. "'Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.' Jeeze, we don't know any British people who look like me who do anything like that, ever. 'Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.' Well, I've had a lot of those in my time... particularly with you."

"Yes? Such as?"

"You don't think I came up with 'why don't we admit what this is really about' on the spur of the moment, do you? _God_ , I was… I was so _smitten_ with you. I just _knew_ you were my monitor, but I couldn't help myself. The funny thing was, I was absolutely certain you were flirting with me, even with all that business with Leekie."

"Hm," Delphine pursed her lips. "Maybe I was, but I just didn't know it, yet."

"Ah-ha," Cosima smiled and glanced back at the computer. "Is there a word on there for that? No. How about, ' _Agnosteros,_ ' like you didn't know you were falling for me?" Delphine laughed and tried one herself.

"' _Laeviculamas,_ ' a clueless love." They were both chuckling, now.

"Ooh, Latin. Very nice," Cosima nodded. Her laughter slowly died down, and she cleared her throat.

"But, like, seriously, Delphine, I… I thought about having so many conversations with you. I'd imagined us talking about our childhoods, our, I guess, _normal_ lives… or just what it would be like to be with you in peace, without all the craziness, you know? I thought about… when you came back from Frankfurt, how I'd tell you that I loved you, and I missed you… and then I did, but I never thought you wouldn't say it back."

Delphine bit her lip, hearing the crack in her lover's voice, the residual devastation.

"I'm so sorry, mon cœur," she breathed, and stroked Cosima's cheek.

"No, no, I mean, I didn't know, you know? I know now why you did it. Back then I would… I would go over that conversation again and again in my head, trying to figure out what happened, what I or you could have done or said differently. I did it until I, I don't know, I couldn't take it anymore, I had to… make some kind of white noise in my head. And then I was so bitter and hurt, I could only lash out." Cosima's eyes had filled, and they began to slowly spill over, silent tears tracking once, twice, down her face. "When you came back I had this conversation in my head," she continued, "where I'd tell you about how I nearly died, how it was you that brought me back. And then after you broke things off, it was one hypothetical discussion after another; you'd take me back, you'd hurt me worse… and then, then as I worked out more and more what really happened, what you were doing while I was being so mad at you, I imagined, I rehearsed how I would apologize to you, let you know that I understood your difficult choices… and I finally did, but that night…"

Her voice trailed off. They were both crying now, caught in the memories, reliving the emotions. They pulled each other close, Cosima's arms around Delphine's shoulders, gingerly avoiding her sore abdomen, Delphine's hands finding her sweetheart's head and neck.

" _Shhh_ … shh, it's okay, now," the wounded woman reassured her amour, assured both of them. " _Je t'aime_. I'm here, I'm alive, we're together. You're… you're going to get all better. We'll reverse the effects, and Sarah and the others, they'll come through. They always have, no matter how insane things have become. We'll get Neolution off our backs, and you and I, we can have all the conversations we want, we need. We'll have a lifetime of conversations, together."

They held each other, Cosima's face tucked into Delphine's fair neck, and then, as their tears slowed and breath stopped hitching, forehead to forehead.

"I love you," the small scientist said. "We're… going to be okay. We're making progress, right?"

"Right, my love," the blonde responded. "We're making progress. We couldn't have come this far, gone through all this, and… and not make it. It just won't happen. I won't believe it. I believe in you, in us… in all of us."

They lingered in their embrace a while longer, giving and taking comfort, until they eased apart for a chaste kiss, and Cosima wiped her face with her hands.

"Huhn," she said, after a moment, and Delphine gave her an inquiring look. The bespectacled woman pointed at the iPad display. "Look at all of these. 'Ellipsism: A sadness that you'll never be able to know how history will turn out. Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore.' I mean, not that I haven't felt those things, but all put together these really are a downer. I, uh, I guess it says 'sorrows,' but who's to say you can't have happy feelings you can't explain?"

"I don't know. No-one," Delphine shrugged. "I mean, you should know better than I. English is your first language."

"Yeah, but I don't think these are all English, and you said you didn't recognize the French-looking one. Wait a minute…" She tapped her lips with her forefinger, then gestured at the screen again. "I've heard of this. These aren't real-life, in-use words. Some guy made them up."

"Quoi?"

"These words, there's this dude who, like, puts them together as some kind of art project. He's got a book, or a blog or something." She touched the tablet and scrolled down. "Yeah, here it is. _The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows_ by John Koenig. You know, I think I've seen this before." She tapped away for a moment, conducting a search. "Yup, it was a while ago, but I did. Here are some more words. 'degrassé _: adj_., entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the universe, experienced in a jolt of recognition that the night sky is not just a wallpaper but a deeply foreign ocean whose currents are steadily carrying off all other castaways, who share our predicament but are already well out of earshot—worlds and stars who would've been lost entirely except for the scrap of light they were able to fling out into the dark, a message in a bottle that's only just now washing up in the Earth's atmosphere, an invitation to a party that already ended a million years ago.' There's nothing sad about that. It's pretty cool, in fact. Ha! It's derived from Neil DeGrasse Tyson!"

Delphine watched her soul mate light up as she read, thought and commented, and felt as though the smile on her own face was somehow deepening, spreading into and under her skin, as if the smile became not just an expression, but part of a feeling itself, reinforcing it, and making her smile even more. The feeling was complex and simple. Fondness, admiration, familiarity with her dear one's quirks but retaining the ability to be surprised by them. She smiled with love, and her smile became one with her love for Cosima.

"You definitely have that emotion as part of your character, that fascination with the 'vastness of the universe,' and also the connections within it. For you, it inspires you… it inspires _me_. That sounds as though it could have been written just for you."

"Yeah, well, how about 'dialecstatic:. hearing a person with a thick accent pronounce a certain phrase… and wanting them to repeat it over and over until the vowels pool in the air and congeal into a linguistic taffy you could break apart and give as presents.' Yeah." She turned to look at her girlfriend with an amused affection, and the blonde shook her head slightly with a chuckle.

"That sounds like you look when you ask me to repeat myself, sometimes. But do you think my accent is that thick?"

"Your accent is just right," Cosima declared. "You know, these definitions are a lot more poetic on his web site. The ones on the list seem kind of dull, in comparison." She squinted back at the screen, and read again. "'Ecstatic shock: the surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.' Nice.'" She turned to give the Frenchwoman a broad grin, her tongue protruding slightly between her teeth, and was answered by a slow wink which drew a flush to her cheeks, before reading another word.

"'Kairosclerosis:'" she continued, "'the moment you realize that you're currently happy' — hey, here we go — 'you're currently happy, consciously trying to savor the feeling….which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste." Her smile crumpled into a look of annoyance. "Okay, that was not as happy as I expected."

"But still, it can be true," Delphine noted. "I don't know anything about the person who, as you say, 'made them up,' but they definitely have a use, both describing a phenomenon and letting you know it exists, not just in you, but in other people as well."

"That's true," Cosima accepted "and, if you think about it, it doesn't really matter that they were made up by one person. All words are made up. They've gotta come from somewhere, and all words were made up and not within common use at some time. Just because they're new and deliberately composed doesn't mean they're less real, especially when people start to use them more often." She pressed the screen again. "Yeah, here's a quote from a lexicographer: 'People say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anybody who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real…' Hmm." They both thought quietly, again, for a moment, until Delphine was overtaken by a yawn.

"Aw, you must be tired," Cosima said, pushing the iPad away and placing her hand on the convalescing woman's knee. "See? Even talking still takes it out of you. I should probably get back to those papers and you can take a nap."

Delphine didn't protest. Her mind had been working, and she had enjoyed the interaction with her re-found love, but she could feel the weight of exhaustion settling in on her. It had been nice to talk about something so seemingly frivolous, so different from their usual exchanges about their health, the situation with Neolution, what Sarah was up to now. At the same time, it had made her think, and brought forward feelings she'd been having, but didn't fully recognize, trying not to get mired in anxiety, the future or the past. It was definitely more to her taste than watching videos of baby animals. Any time she got to share with Cosima, any opportunity to fully communicate, when there had been so little communication before, and their time together had nearly ended, was precious to her now. They both survived by way of miracle, and she didn't want to waste their time worrying, when they could spend it healing, her wound, Cosima's lungs and uterus, and the the emotional injuries the last few months had inflicted on them.

Cosima placed a kiss on her forehead and slid off the bed, back into her chair. Delphine pulled the covers up higher, allowing her head to settle into the pillow, just able to see the studious woman in the side of her vision, through the slits of drooping eyelids. She watched as a small, reflective smile curled her lover's lips, and met Cosima's eyes when she looked up from her paperwork at her.

"Fate accompli, F-A-T-E," the small woman beside her bed shared, both mischief and warmth in her voice. "The sensation you experience when you meet and realize, so suddenly and completely that it feels like you're dreaming, even if you don't want it to happen, that this person is the one you love, you're meant to be with. You are each other's destiny." She reached her hand out over the bed, and Delphine took it, a pang of adoration and a wash of contentment flowing through her, bringing out a returning grin. They held hands, Cosima idly stroking the French woman's with her thumb for a bit, then giving it a squeeze, and continuing to hold it as she looked back down at her folder. The only light in the room now was the small reading lamp on the nightstand, and the dimness lulled Delphine closer to slumber. Still she gazed at her love, Cosima not noticing until she heard the hint of a whisper.

"What are you thinking about over there? Can't turn your brain off," Cosima asked fondly, raising her head to take in the supine woman's look of of determination, the working of small muscles expressing both weariness and the resolve to figure something out. The blonde thought, then sighed.

"I can't think of a clever word for it, or just a little phrase," she half-mumbled, and Cosima leaned closer.

"A word for what, baby," the American asked softly.

"There's a famous quote by a writer, Germaine de Staël. Delphine's eyes and mouth condensed in concentration. "She said, ah, 'L'amour est l'emblème de l'éternité, il confond toute la notion de temps, efface toute la mémoire d'un commencement, toute la crainte d'une extrémité.'" She looked back at her paramour again. "It means 'Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.'" She met Cosima's eyes with her own seriously, genuinely. "Everything we've been through, the times we've been apart, the love I felt for you was my constant. I thought there was no hope, no time left, but through _this_ ," she touched her chest over her heart, her eyes growing damp, "I found I had time, I have hope that we'll get through whatever comes. It's… un amour qui sauve la vie… amour qui ressuscite. It's a love that is so strong, it has brought us both back to each other from the brink of death."

Cosima's lips trembled and her eyes filled again. She got up and slid into the bed next to Delphine, snuggling up to her with one hand covering and fingers interweaving with those the woman she loved still held over her heart.

"That's… that's really beautiful," she said quietly. "I don't… think you have to condense that. Sometimes a feeling is, like, just too much for a single word." Delphine gave her a small smile as her eyes eased closed.

"Je t'aime," she murmured. Then, as if from a distance, "after my nap, will you let me help with the research?"

"We work best as a team," Cosima answered, brushing a kiss against a relaxed cheek. "I wouldn't have it any other way."


End file.
